Water heaters are devices for heating water for various household or industrial needs. The term water heater denotes a water storage appliance which has at least one tank serving as a hot water storage heating body, also frequently referred to as a boiler. The water is admitted into the storage tank where it is intended to be heated therein. Furthermore, the invention relates to an electric water storage water heater. The capacity of such a tank is more or less great according to the requirements to which storage appliances are assigned, for example by being associated with one or more bathroom sink taps, a shower and/or a bath, etc.
In a known manner, an electric water heater generally has a heating element immersed in the tank serving as a heating body for heating the water contained therein. The water in the tank of a water heater is naturally stratified if it is not mixed: hot water at the top and cold water at the bottom.
The temperature of the water in the heating body is, in a known manner, monitored by a sensor or a probe, said probe being immersed in the tank and positioned preferably in the vicinity of the water heating device. The probe cannot be placed too close to the heating device as, in this case, the probe would detect the temperature of the heating device and not the temperature of the water to be heated. The drawback of this probe, intended to measure the temperature of the water, is that it is not configured to sense effectively or above all rapidly overheating of the heating device; said device being liable to continue heating until the irremediable damage thereof in the event of it being unable to exchange the heat thereof effectively with the water. The problem is particularly evident for water heaters comprising a heating device in the form of a resistor. Indeed, resistors are known to have a particularly small exchange surface area with water, while requiring a significant time to heat the water. As such, it proves to be particularly difficult to detect, finely and reactively, overheating of the heating device. Overheating is very frequently detected too late giving rise to irreversible damage for the water heater and the heating device.
As such, overheating of the heating device is a known major problem, due to a lack of heating body heat exchange, to a lack of irrigation or to excessive scaling.
The present invention makes it possible to solve all or, at least, some of the drawbacks of current techniques. A problem underlying the present invention is that of proposing a method for managing heating preventing overheating of the heating device by detecting a probable shortage of water in the tank of the water heater.